Why Do Jews Need a Land?
I’d think God’s word should be heard equally everywhere.
This post contains the core message of my book, Land of Health: Israel’s War for Wellness, now out from Menucha Publishers in a second revised edition.
Healthy Israel - Part 1 of 6
The arc of the Torah’s story bends in one direction: the descendants of the Jewish nation’s forefathers entering and conquering Israel.
For religious Jews - of all political leanings - the Nation of Israel cannot be separated from the Land of Israel, as I explained several weeks ago.
Yet we’re so used to identifying the Nation with the Land that we might have never stopped to wonder why they always go together.
Why a Land?
What would Judaism have been missing if we had received the Torah on some random mountain - say, in the Sinai desert - and then returned to civilization (anywhere!) to live as good Jews wherever life will take us?
We’ve been scattered over the world for more than half of the 3300 years since we received the Torah, and are still going strong. Why couldn’t that always have been the plan?
Look at other religions. The various denominations of Christianity and Islam each have their holy cities and sites, but there is no country called Christian or Muslim. All countries are free (or forced) to join (or not join) the ranks of any faith.
Which makes lots of sense: why should spiritual beliefs be confined to borders made from dirt and water? Isn’t God bigger than that?
Because of the the Land’s central role in the Jewish religion, understanding its necessity and meaning shouldn’t require complex, debatable theories. Yet I’m unaware of anywhere that the Torah or Sages directly explained why the Jewish nation is so identified with its land.
Over many years, I’ve researched and thought a lot about this question. I’ve come to learn that there is a simple answer. Today I’ll share with you the bottom line, and in the coming weeks I’ll expand more.
The Jewish Person
The Jewish nation isn’t many individuals who share a common history, philosophy, or set of morals. We’re not even a nation in the regular sense of the term.
Rather, as God told Moshe (Moses) to tell Pharaoh in God’s first message to the Egyptian king (Shemos/Exodus 4:22): “My firstborn son is Israel.”
God called us “son,” in the singular.
The Jewish nation is a single human life that reaches farther and higher than any individual can ever dream: knowing and emulating the One God. We find God by learning and living God’s Torah - together, as one unit.
“You are One, Your Name [as revealed in the Torah] is One, and who is like Your nation Israel, One nation in the land.” (Shabbos afternoon Mincha prayer)
“Israel camped there, next to the mountain [of Sinai] - as one person, with one heart.” (Shemos/Exodus 19:2 with Rashi)
Then the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 11) taught:
“All of Israel has a portion in the World to Come.”
Individual people - Jew and non Jew alike - don’t find God from their individual holiness and righteousness, but from their identification with the life of Israel.1
To learn more more how individuals join together to form a single nation, check out this article I wrote about King Charles’ coronation:
Soul and Body
How exactly is Israel a single human life?
It’s easy to see how a unified nation possesses a common soul: both nations and souls are intellectual concepts that exist beyond the material realm.
To glimpse the oneness of Israel the Nation, just look at the love and support pouring out from Jews all over the world to the victims of October 7. In the days after the massacre, flights between the US and Israel were packed: not with Jews fleeing the war zone, but with Jews returning home to help.
But where is the body of Israel? It’s great to have a common soul somewhere up in heaven, and it’s awesome when we occasionally see its effects down here. Yet on most days we’re regular people living inside physical bodies.
Everything we do, for better and worse, happens in the material world:
Work and rest
Love and hate
War and peace
Anger and acceptance
Desire and calm
Connection and isolation
Eating and indulging
Sitting and moving
For God and His Torah to guide Israel on earth, Israel must also have a common body that we can together see, touch, feel, and care for.
That body is the Land of Israel.
Israel the Nation breathes life into its Land through living there by God’s will, as expressed in its special Torah laws. We give spiritual form and purpose to this little corner of the material world.
And the Nation needs the Land: the material home where its spiritual ideas and ideals are grounded - literally! - in physical earth. The Land gives the Nation its physical home, an island of unity in a world of separation and conflicts.
To learn more how Israel is the body of the Jewish nation, take a look at this footnote.2
Death and Life in Israel’s Body
At least that’s how it’s supposed to work.
And with many bumps, fits, and starts, this is how it worked for some 1300 years, until the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE sent everything crashing down in heaps of stones and buckets of tears that continue to get higher and fuller every day.
Unfortunately, the Jewish people today are scattered over the world. We’re also separate from each other in body, mind, and spirit, and unfathomably distant from oneness with God and His Torah. We can’t agree how to serve the God of Israel, or even whether such a God exists to serve.
Without our unified body and soul, Israel’s nation and land have lost their human form. One might almost say that Israel has died, which is the natural outcome of any soul leaving its body.
But we aren’t quite dead. Instead, as the Kuzari (2:34) explains, we are a terminally ill patient: doctors have long given up hope, yet we still hang on, trusting in a miracle. Like the dried bones of Yechezkel/Ezekiel’s vision (37:3) that came back to life, we too will return to our original human form.
How do we know that? Because we remain tethered to the Land. Jews all over the world live, pray, and die for the Land, and study its special laws. And in the past century, millions of Jews have returned to Israel, many for the purpose of finding its God.
While the fragmented pieces of Israel’s soul search for their body, their body patiently waits for its children’s united revival and return. Through all the darkness, fear, and tragedy, the Land of Israel anchors its Nation, grounding us in God’s world when the earth falls away from beneath.
After October 7, Jews didn’t just hop over to help other Jews. They returned home to help their brothers.
As this tragic war grinds on, Jews of all stripes are joining forces to support Jewish life in Israel, each in their own way. Together we cry to God, mourn the murdered, pray for the wounded and hostages. Together we’re grateful to our brothers and sisters who are risking their lives to enable the Jewish soul to live in its body in peace and safety. Together we’re grateful to everyone - Jew and non-Jew alike - who supports our right to live.
May God watch over Israel, body and soul.
Perhaps you’re still trying to wrap you’re head around the idea that a country has the form of a human body, and what that means to you. Read the rest of the Healthy Israel series, beginning with Part 2:
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See Rambam in PH”M at the end of the introduction to Chelek, and M”T Hilchos Teshuva 3:11, Hilchos Melachim 8:11
Working God’s Land
Work means adding value to matter by giving it new form. In other words, work means using effort to actualize something’s potential.
For example, a worker uses cement, wood, steel and glass to construct a building. The raw materials always existed; he just arranges them in a new way.
Work doesn’t mean creating something from nothing. Only God ever did that: “With the word of God, the heavens were made.” God said “Create!” and immediately, with a big bang, the world came into being. Because there was nothing around before that needed to be re-formed, the moment of creation was effortless.
Over the next six days, God worked to give the world the form it has today. Then, on Shabbos, God rested “from all His work.”
Because we’re not God, we always need to work to create anything of value. Then, automatically, we own that value.
Job’s declaration that “Man is born to toil” (Job 5:7) calls us to inject new value into our world through dedicated work. Only people can do that: animals know nothing about adding value or form because that requires a mind that perceives abstract concepts. (Ever saw a cat buying a bottle of milk?)
Jewish ceremonies, rituals, and laws aren’t attempts to transcend work by ascending to spiritual worlds where all is perfectly formed bliss. The final words of the Torah’s creation story teach that God rested “from all the work that God created - to do.” Who is now supposed to continue God’s work? You and me.
Instead, Torah work imbues meaning and spirit (form) into material living (matter). Don’t just eat: thank God for the meal with a blessing. Don’t just build a house: nail a mezuza on the door to remind you of God’s oneness whenever you enter or exit. Don’t just do your life’s work: do it with and for God.
This is all great for individual Jews. The materials with which we work are whatever we are and own, each person for himself.
But, as I explained, the Torah isn’t only for individual people. The Nation of Israel is also a unified human form: the beloved first-born child of God. The material with which we work, giving it new form and value, is the Land of Israel. Whenever we study and live by the Torah, we add value to the Land.
The Kuzari (2:12) explains this with a beautiful analogy. A certain mountain has the best soil and climate in the world for producing grapes. But if nobody plants the vines and tends to them, there won’t be any grapes. The vineyard needs this mountain to make the best wine around, and the mountain needs workers to actualize its potential.
The Land of Israel is our mountain; we are its special vines and grapes. When we work in Torah living, Israel produces the God’s cherished nation.
I love the video format!
Great article! Informative, thought provoking, respectful and well written. Gave me lots of food for thought. Thanks for sharing.